What have you done Baggio Leung? I voted for you to represent us inside LegCo

You know Sixtus, when I went skipping down the road all those months ago to vote for you, I was having a rush of radical optimism which I knew was dangerous in one so old, but I chose to ignore. Of course, I didn’t believe in Hong Kong independence. That could only happen if China was to disintegrate, and then for about quarter of an hour, before a warlord emerged from the smoke and devoured the place whole.

Instead, I was hoping that a new generation of bright, young trouble makers would give this local moss-on- a- rock regime so many bowel movements, reform would come about. The only people I had heard of called Sixtus were popes. Sixtus IV created the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican Archives, Sixtus V cleared out corruption from Rome and Sixtus II was a martyr, so I had high hopes of our own Sixtus VI.

Baggio Leung campaigning.

And they started to be born out, at least with Eddie Chu over in New Territories West who sprung the scab off the ulcerous obsequiousness of the Tamar regime to the Heung Yee Kuk. Even young Nathan Law, with his Jesuitical aloofness from the political class, was being impressive. Sixtus VI however, went out to play with the girl called Wai –ching with long hair, from darkest Yuen Long.

Baggio Leung. Photo: Catherine Lai/HKFP.

Sixtus, you really should have had this oath thing sorted out in your mind before you coaxed your tick out of me. I suspected you might pull a few faces while you did it but I thought that, if you were going to get as far as the desk, you would lie. Anyone who isn’t ready to tell a whopper that would make a used car salesman blush shouldn’t be anywhere near politics. Instead you showed me that you were young and a troublemaker but not bright. The sad, pointy cape made from the banner, the girl reading from an iPhone like she was strap hanging on the MTR, the naughty play on dirty words all said bad secondary school review. Leung Kwok-hung would have been proud of me. I wanted to throw something.

We hapless circle-tickers were expecting you inside, Sixtus, slugging it out on housing, welfare, taxation and health and not outside directing disturbances at the corner of Queen’s Road and Bonham Strand. There is where you will stay now, I suppose, and it’s probably a lot more fun, though I hope you don’t catch cold as the violence increases through the winter.

What we 37,997 voting orphans are going to do without you, I do not know but I fear we may become notorious. We will have almost elected to LegCo a man whose only words spoken there cuffed all future election candidates, castrated the President of the Council, decapitated the Judiciary and will bring about Article 23. Sixtus, you will go down in history with your five namesakes, and please be careful that seven Hong Kong cops are not down there too, waiting to give you a kicking.

HKFP Contributor

Stuart Wolfendale is a freelance columnist, critic and writer based in Hong Kong. He wrote a long running weekly column in the South China Morning Post, was daily diarist of the Eastern Express, back page columnist of the Hong Kong Standard and contributor to Spike magazine. He also trains people in presentation skills and public speaking.

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